instrument of growth the courtship and marriage plot in jane austen's novels

Instrument of Growth: The Courtship and Marriage Plot in Jane Austen's NovelsAuthor(s): William H. MageeSource: The Journal of Narrative Technique, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Spring, 1987), pp. 198-208Published by: Journal of Narrative TheoryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30225182 .

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Instrument of Growth: The Courtship and Marriage Plot

in Jane Austen's Novels William H. Magee

Among Jane Austen's artistic achievements none is more deliberate than her gradual enlargement of the courtship and marriage plot into a variable pattern for detailing the growth of successive heroines. At first, in Northanger Abbey and Sense and Sensibility, she adopted the plot convention as it came to her, finding like many a fellow novelist of her time that it was a convenient structure for unifying her character studies and themes. Then in Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park she struggled to free her heroines from its restrictions as they learn from experience. Finally in Emma and Persuasion she adapted it to demonstrate the range and force of their new wisdom.

The courtship and marriage convention of the novel of manners provided early British novelists with the necessary framework for their art of storytelling. It had two important attractions. It concentrated on the central concern of family status in their patriarchal society, and it created a self-contained world of art with an optimistic ending suited to their concept of human progress. When centered on a hero, it showed a young man committing his domestic life to a young woman of appropriate class standing and fortune. When centered on a heroine, as in Jane Austen's novels, it featured a young woman entering society in search of a husband to provide her with virtually the only career then open to a woman-that is, marriage. In the eighteenth and nine- teenth centuries it dominated the novels of a society that believed in material and moral ideals and wanted that belief fulfilled by the triumph of the best people. That positive outcome reinforced readers in both their hope of a per- sonal reward for good social behavior and their faith that public progress promised the stability and continuity of their way of life.

In its time the convention so dominated the planning of British novelists that they followed it whether it suited their central intention or not. The story of a Jeanie Deans may reach its natural climax when she secures a pardon for her sister through Queen Caroline, but Scott felt it necessary to extend the plot of The Heart of Midlothian until Jeanie had married and she and



Instrument of Growth 199

her husband prospered. The freeing of the Reverend Josiah Crawley from the charge of theft may furnish the anticipated climax of Last Chronicles of Barset, but Trollope went on to conclude the story with the wedding of Grace Crawley. In such novels the themes and responses to them warp the framework of the plot convention, and are warped by it in return. The courtship and marriage convention provided a wholly suitable plot only when novelists enlarged it into a theme and made that theme the main concern of their central characters, as Charlotte Bronte did in Jane Eyre. Even then it improved their artistry only when a novelist like Jane Austen became conscious of its positive poten- tials and set out to exploit them.

In her first completed novels, Northanger Abbey and Sense and Sensibili- ty, Jane Austen took over the courtship and marriage plot from her feminine predecessors and used it as she found it. She brought Catherine Morland's life of fantasy at Northanger Abbey to an end with the customary proposal, by Henry Tilney. After laughing at the absurdities of Catherine's Gothic novel delusions, she closed them off with a storybook romance taken seriously. In other words, after "the visions of romance were over,"' she fell back on a bookish device to set her plot free from her parody of bookish living. As might be expected of so conscious an artist, the irony of the device struck her, so much so that her amusement at herself overflowed into the text. When Henry comes courting to Fullerton, she needs him for her plot, but she laughs at her need:

I must confess that his affection [for Catherine] originated in nothing better than gratitude, or, in other words, that a persuasion of her par- tiality for him had been the only cause of giving her a serious thought. (p. 243)

Despite the sense of parody still lingering here, Jane Austen is now relying on the convention that she has been ridiculing. She is depending on it entirely when describing Catherine's prospective brother-in-law: "Any further defini- tion of his merits must be unnecessary; the most charming man in the world is instantly before the imagination of us all" (p. 251). The humor here is still more like banter rather than parody or satire, and it hints at the great truth that a society of readers brings its conventional expectations to its popular images. Finally, in the last sentence of the novel, Jane Austen retires gracefully from this juxtaposition of parody and a serious use of the convention with a last smile at her artistic compromise: "I leave it to be settled by whom- soever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience" (p. 252). Yet in ending this conventional plot with a conventional climax, Jane Austen was also making its rigidity apparent. Catherine's Gothic delusions make her distinctive as a heroine, but like Jeanie Deans and Grace Crawley she ends up as the usual model bride typically accepting her suitor. An urge to free the climax from its more stereotyped restrictions was to develop in her later



200 The Journal of Narrative Technique

novels, though not in her next one. Thrning from parody to satire in Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen

developed her most solemn and also her most complex and rigid of plots. Needing two heroines to dramatize her theme of two kinds of sensibility (a restrained and desirable sensibility in Elinor Dashwood as opposed to an ex- cessive and destructive kind in Marianne Dashwood), she also needed two similar plots. When traveling to attend a sick Marianne who has confessed her need of " 'atonement to my God' " for her extravagant sensibility (p. 346), Mrs. Dashwood recognizes the strength of Elinor's emotions, silent though they have been: "suffering almost as much, certainly with less self-provocation, and greater fortitude" (p. 356).

In devising two plots to try these heroine's emotions to the utmost, Jane Austen developed two love triangles rather than the linear courtship of a Henry Tilney and Catherine Morland (for the egregious John Thorpe at most represents only a shadow of a triangle in Northanger Abbey). Variety occurs in the alteration from a triangle based on the man's choice with Elinor to one based on the woman's choice with Marianne. In the more traditional pattern Edward Ferrars must decide between Elinor and Lucy Steele. In the new feminine version developed by Fanny Burney in Evelina, Marianne is the pivotal heroine coming to prefer Colonel Brandon over Willoughby.

Although both plots serve the theme of Sense and Sensibility well, they are conventional rather than innovative, and at their closing disappointing. Jane Austen only notes but fails to depict both Edward's proposal to Elinor and Colonel Brandon's to Marianne. Instead the late high point of tension becomes the confession of Willoughby, the anti-hero of Marianne's plot, to Elinor, the heroine of the other plot, for only that late incident is dramatized. Elinor may take charge of her sister's plot in the London scenes and here at Cleveland, but in her own she becomes passive. She has to wait like Harriet Byron with Sir Charles Grandison and Clementina for Edward to be released by Lucy Steele.2 Instead of remaining the active heroine of her early verbal combats with Lucy, she has become the victim of Edward's dissimulation. Marianne is even more passive as a "reward" for Colonel Brandon (pp. 335, 378). The long expected pairings and explanations surge like the customary tide through the plot-ridden end of the novel and submerge any flexibility that Elinor and Marianne have earlier introduced.

Pride and Prejudice is not plot-ridden, but on first reading it seems to be centered on the simplest and most conventional plot in a Jane Austen novel. In a straightforward linear courtship Elizabeth Bennet reverses her initial dislike of Darcy and accepts him and his longstanding love for her. A triangle based on her choosing between Wickham and Darcy would have been im- possible, for Wickham was not ready to consider marrying a relatively poor Elizabeth. Instead Wickham presents a challenge to Elizabeth's skill as a "studier of character" (p. 42), and along with Darcy shows her how much she still has to learn about her favorite hobby. Darcy's first, unsatisfactory proposal to her in Hunsford parsonage, with his ensuing letter of explana-




tion, is a simple obstruction in the linear progress of the plot, like the trials of parental and social oppositions faced by Pamela, Tom Jones, and Cecilia. From the Hunsford proposal to the visit to Darcy's estate of Pemberley, from Pemberley back home to Longbourne and Darcy's second, successful proposal, the plot runs inevitably, exuding the air of artistic ease that makes Pride and Prejudice the most comfortable of Jane Austen's novels.

Yet there is this difficulty in Pride and Prejudice. Though Pemberley is not quite a fairyland castle built on a cloud of romance, it is a fantasy home rewarding a heroine who loves wisely and well. In the marriage of Charlotte Lucas and Collins the novel has satirized the received match according to the social mores of the times. If accepted, Charlotte's philosophy that " 'Hap- piness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance' " (p. 23) would make nonsense of Elizabeth's persistent efforts to judge others, and especially poten- tial suitors, by their "merit" and "sense" (p. 135). Collins' self-parading proposal to Elizabeth, which satirizes the social expectations of the times delight- fully, brings a recurring technical difficulty to the fore. To merely contrast Elizabeth and Darcy's marriage to Charlotte and Collins' would accentuate its unrealistic, storybook essence. When Elizabeth accepts Darcy, Jane Austen was well aware that the sordid society of her times might even think along with Sir Walter Scott that the opulence of Pemberley had won her.3 To fore- stall this interpretation Jane Austen took time to describe it as not "serious" (p. 373). Although Pemberley is not an image of greed, Jane Austen still had to make it look plausible. To do so she also contrasted Elizabeth and Darcy's marriage to Jane and Bingley's. As two storybook lovers, Jane and Bingley seem so idyllic in their romance that they make Elizabeth and Darcy's love look realistic in contrast. Pride and Prejudice at once satirizes the business- like marriages of the times and parodies the fantasy romance of the courtship convention. As a result Elizabeth and Darcy's love appears as a happy median. Jane Austen made the social mores look extreme and founded a plausible alternative on a plot that may seem simply conventional but has been made flexible.

The resistance to the rigidity of the convention latent in Pride and Prej- udice continues in Mansfield Park and causes the tension that twentieth- century readers sense in the plot. Among the critical disagreements as to the theme of the novel, the likeability of Fanny Price, the presence of irony, none is more curious than the opposing views over Fanny's rejection of Henry Crawford's proposal. Johnson argues that she is morally wrong to reject it and Cecil feels she would have accepted it if Jane Austen had let her.4 On the other side critics like Chapman and Wright applaud Fanny's refusal to marry a rake.5 To support her action, though, they have to disagree with the author, for Jane Austen as omniscient narrator declares of Henry: "Would he have persevered, and uprightly, Fanny must have been his reward-and a reward very voluntarily bestowed-within a reasonable period from Edmund's marrying Mary" (p. 467). What, we might ask, did Jane Austen mean by such a remark? In a novel which lauds "true merit and true love" as the essence




of married happiness (p. 473), how could she consider that a high-minded Fanny who has loved Edmund from girlhood could marry a male flirt like Henry? The question is one of how far Jane Austen is plotting outside of the courtship convention, in which the approved match must come to pass. For an answer we must look to her increasingly versatile technique of storytelling.

In the plot of Mansfield Park Jane Austen once again set up two triangles of lovers, but she connected them closely with one another. Instead of devel- oping them as the completely separate groupings of Sense and Sensibility, she constructed them with a common side, or shared pair of lovers. Edmund and Fanny belong in both triangles, although Edmund is the pivotal figure in one and Fanny in the other. In one Edmund attracts the love of both Mary Crawford and Fanny and must choose between the two. In the other Fanny appeals to both Henry Crawford and Edmund and must reject the former to remain free to accept the latter. Conventional triangles present a choice that is more apparent than real. A hero must choose the heroine, a heroine the hero. So it is too in Jane Austen's earlier novels. In Mansfield Park Jane Austen modified the convention by introducing some sense of real choice for both Edmund and Fanny. Like many a critic Edmund prefers Mary to Fanny as a woman, but not as a moralist or a minister's wife-to-be. Fanny feels herself inflexibly opposed to Henry Crawford, but Jane Austen assures us that she is not so set in her ways as she believes. Edmund would have a more stimulating if less docile wife in Mary Crawford, and Fanny would find an absorbing outlet for moral good in helping Henry's neglected tenants at Everingham.

As a result of this flexibility, the conventional conclusion is disappointing in Mansfield Park. In marrying each other Edmund and Fanny seem to be taking the easy way out of their difficulties and so they look unheroic. But such a response is at variance with the convention. By its principles there is no chance that Edmund or Fanny would marry anyone but each other. If readers feel otherwise, Jane Austen has raised their doubts. It is she who declares the alternate possibilities to be probable, and she likely does so because the rigidity of the convention has been irking her. Quietly in Pride and Prej- udice and more overtly in Mansfield Park she is moving towards plots that are less arbitrary and more complex, less fixed and more realistic than those of the convention. But she never abandoned it; she only made it more flexible.

The courtship plot itself in Emma is simpler than any that Jane Austen had developed since Northanger Abbey, but the use of convention is more complex and subtle. Emma and Knightley merely have to become aware of their love for one another and marry, and Emma's delusions are the only obstacle. Those delusions are courtship and marriage plots which Emma constructs out of the convention. Instead of varying the convention as author to increase its flexibility, Jane Austen created a surrogate author in Emma whose turn it is to struggle with its rigidity. As a matchmaker Emma is really acting as author, pairing off couples, especially Harriet Smith and Mr. Elton, and later Harriet Smith and Frank Churchill. Only, Emma lacks an experi-




enced author's skill and makes up improbable plots. She fails to consider that Harriet though "an unpretending, single-minded, artless girl" to Knightley (p. 331) is too poor and socially inferior to suit the shrewd Mr. Elton or satisfy the fashionable Frank Churchill.

Emma in fact tries to impose purely bookish versions of the courtship convention on the life of Highbury, and for that Jane Austen makes fun of her while teaching her to be more practical. Even so Emma overlooks the most obvious bookish romance in town. She misses the courting (and secret engage- ment) of the "hero" Frank Churchill and "the fair heroine" Jane Fairfax (pp. 256, 220), despite the repeated clue that both have been holidaying together at Weymouth (cf. pp. 169, 199-220, 217-218). But in teaching Emma a lesson in probability, Jane Austen has also been teaching her how to become a more sensible social leader. To do so she has played several possible plot patterns off against one another, some of Emma's construction and some of her own. Emma's are the more conventional, the more idyllic, and also the less probable. The most likely match for Mr. Elton is a brash but well-to-do social climber like Augusta Hawkins, and Emma's assessment of the social hierar- chy must expand to take this sordid aspiration into account. The most likely match for Harriet is farmer Robert Martin, and Emma's perspective of Highbury society must also encompass the view that he too is worthy. In demonstrating the unlikely in the convention as opposed to the likely in society, Jane Austen has made the plot a course in the education of Emma as social leader.

Like Emma, Persuasion makes double use of the courtship convention, but in this novel the contrast is due to a time lapse between two versions of it rather than a heroine's absurdly bookish application of it to her friends and neighbors. Anne Elliot has had seven years to reassess her socially prompted rejection of Frederick Wentworth's proposal, and during that time she has concluded that she was wrong to refuse it and would accept it now. To induce this change, Jane Austen has toyed with the convention, proffering Anne other matches which, though not without their attractions, are inferior to the one she refused. Anne would have proved a better wife to Charles Musgrove than her quarrelsome sister Mary has done, but she was right to refuse this idle, empty-headed scion of the landed gentry. Captain Benwick breathes Romantic poetry, but Anne recognizes that his feelings are shallow and fickle. Through William Walter Elliot, Anne could revive her dear mother's title of Lady Elliot in her own person, but she senses that William Walter, like Willoughby, Wickham, Collins and Frank Churchill, toadies to the loveless social goals of class status and wealth in marriage. Anne waits instead for the man who appreciates her worth and loves her as a person, even though by doing so she abandons the class of the landed gentry. For her the convention has led her away from tradition and into a new social milieu.

The changes in Jane Austen's handling of the courtship plot in the six novels from Northanger Abbey to Persuasion show a major growth in her artistry. As she progressed from novel to novel, her use of the convention first ceased




to be routine and then it came to make a dynamic contribution to her char- acterization and themes. It deepened her larger interests in at least four ways. She intensified it to project her gradual acceptance of sensibility as fundamen- tal to a proposal based on love. She adjusted it so as to demonstrate an in- creased respect of men, especially the hero, for women. She adapted it to sug- gest the neglected contribution that women could make to society. And in the end she redirected it to show her last heroines establishing or entering a new way of life in their society.

As a daughter of the more conservative traditions of the eighteenth century, Jane Austen grew up suspicious of sensibility. In her teens she had lam- pooned it as selfish, impractical and hypocritical in such juvenile stories as "Love and Friendship," "Lesley Castle" and "Catharine." These charges recur with Isabella Thorpe in Northanger Abbey, for the plot exposes her deceit while rewarding the honest though quiet love of Catherine Morland and Henry Tilney. In Sense and Sensibility Marianne is no hypocrite, but her open sensibility leads her to near disaster as she overvalues the enthusiastic but cruel Willoughby and undervalues the quiet but generous Colonel Brandon. Her plot consists of shifting her affections from one to the other as she comes to re-evaluate the two after she renounces her excess sensibility. Yet readers have typically responded more fully to her open sensibility than to Elinor's self-contained love. The courtship plot really presupposes an open expression of love, at least at the climactic proposal. In the earlier novels although love is not exactly secondary it is subservient to a rational assessment of Edward Ferrars by Elinor (and this she also requires of her repentant sister Marianne with Colonel Brandon), of Darcy by Elizabeth Bennet, and to some extent of Fanny Price by Edmund Bertram.

It is perhaps inevitable that the proposal scenes of these earlier couples are either not dramatized at all, or, with Elizabeth, reduced to silence and cliches. (The almost always witty "Elizabeth was too much embarrassed to say a word" and Darcy "expressed himself on the occasion as sensibly and as warmly as a man violently in love can be supposed to do" [p. 366]. Earlier Mrs. Gardiner has complained " 'that expression of "violently in love" is so hackneyed .. .' " [p. 140]). Unlike Elizabeth, Fanny Price is a heroine of "sensibility" (p. 79), and although Edmund marries her on the rebound and his proposal is off stage, she certainly marries out of "true love" (p. 473). From then on vocal love is vital to the climactic proposals of Jane Austen's heroines, even if their actual acceptance is not fully dramatized. Emma Woodhouse opposes " 'love' " to " 'the usual inducements of women to marry' " (p. 84), and when the plot seems to present Harriet Smith as her rival for Knightley, she is determined to fight for him. But it is with Anne Elliot that sensibility issues in overpowering love at the climactic proposal, with the force to pro- duce Jane Austen's most emotional scene. Anne's discussion with Captain Harville about the durability of women's love inspires Frederick Wentworth's letter of proposal, and her acceptance leaves her "glowing and lovely in sensibility and happiness" (p. 245). In Emma the variations on the courtship




plot which the heroine fancies all vanish when confronted by true love, and Emma is happy to return Harriet Smith to Robert Martin. In Persuasion Anne's durable love has outlasted the offered variations on the plot to pro- duce the happiest of Jane Austen's brides-to-be.

Alongside this growing reliance on love in courtship, Jane Austen adjusted the conventional plot to stress the value of women, particularly her heroines, to their men. Frederick Wentworth comes to respect his fiancee as a woman more than most if not all of his predecessors had done theirs. Henry Tilney and George Knightley are useful tutors to Catherine Morland and Emma Woodhouse, but that role encourages them to patronize girls who are never their equals. Knightley is not quite so belittling as Henry Tilney to the heroine (occasionally he is inferior to Emma-his mind is less open [p. 67]), but he is something of a father figure to her. Edward Ferrars and Edmund Bertram, like their prototype Grandison, keep their women waiting in misery for the outcome of earlier entanglements.

In the earlier novels only Darcy learns to regard his future wife as his in- tellectual equal. At his first proposal he feels and behaves like the typical self- satisfied man in a patriarchal society, as he later admits: " 'I came to you without a doubt of my reception' " (p. 369). From his rejection he learned his inadequacy as a man: " 'You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased' " (p. 369). And this learning process guided by the heroine will continue after the second proposal: Elizabeth "remembered that he had yet to learn to be laught at, and it was rather too early to begin" (p. 371). For both Elizabeth and Darcy marriage is not just a conventional happy ending to a work of art; it is a dynamic growing relationship.6

In the later novels it is Frederick who shows similar progress. As he tells Louisa Musgrove on the walk to Winthrop, he admires in her what he seems to consider the more masculine qualities of "decision and firmness" in the face of family opposition (p. 88), for he resents Anne's lack of them during the time of his first proposal. But the device of Louisa's wilful fall on the Cobb at Lyme Regis allows Anne to show the greater worth of her more feminine patience and resilience in moments of sudden crisis,7 anticipating her argument of superior emotional durability in women which she makes to Captain Harville. As a result Anne becomes confirmed as Frederick's ideal of womanhood: " 'A strong mind, with sweetness of manner' " (p. 62). Like Elizabeth Bennet she earns respect for her feminine intellect as well as her more traditional femininity.

Respect for the heroine is particularly crucial during the approach to the climactic proposal, and Jane Austen regularly adapted the plot to heighten the sense of the heroine's worth then. Elinor Dashwood interviews Willoughby as a woman of moral authority, Elizabeth Bennet defends Georgiana Darcy as well as herself from Caroline Bingley's sneers at the Pemberley tea party, and Emma Woodhouse offers a sympathetic ear to Knightley about his as- sumed love for Harriet Smith. In such a sequence the canceled chapter of




Persuasion offers a unique opportunity to watch Jane Austen adapt her technique to enhance the prestige of her heroines. In the canceled chapter Ad- miral Croft forces Anne into a passive situation to listen to Frederick's proposal. In the two new chapters (II.x and xi) Anne transfers herself from the humiliating apartment of her scornful father and elder sister to the vitalizing hotel room of the welcoming Musgroves. There she decides on their best course of action about her father and sister's unwelcome invitation to them, and there she debates with Captain Harville on women's affections as Frederick writes his proposal. It is in fact her assertions that prompt him to write. Through this device Jane Austen puts her heroine for once in control of the plot during the proposal scene. In contrast to his predecessors Frederick has come to recognize and admire the femininity of his finac6e as well as her stamina.

Beyond the hero's respect and admiration, some more widespread social significance for the heroine is also important in the later novels. The earliest ones use the plot simply as a framework for a love story. The occupation of Henry Tilney and Edward Ferrars as clergymen plays no role in their stories, and Catherine's and Elinor's public contributions as minister's wives are not anticipated. In the remaining novels in contrast Jane Austen gradually enlarged her concern for the social role of her heroines. In Pride and Prejudice Elizabeth's skill as de facto hostess at the Pemberley tea party after Georgiana has been discomfited anticipates her success as lady of the house in the future. In Mansfield Park Fanny Price promises to bring an outreaching moral strength as minister's wife to a parish that has languished under her two predecessors, the greedy and shrewish Mrs. Norris and the privately oriented, gourmet-minded Mrs. Grant. In Emma the heroine trains for her role of social leader of Highbury through the series of matchmaking and gossiping errors that constitute the plot. All these heroines accept the life of the landed gentry into which they were born, but Anne Elliot deliberately turns her back on it and joins one of the rising new classes in society. By accepting Frederick Wentworth the naval officer in preference to Charles Musgrove or William Walter Elliot, she leaves the life of the stately homes, taking its best feminine strengths with her.

The heroine of the courtship and marriage plot is in search of a new life to replace that of a lost childhood home that in Jane Austen's novels is often stultifying. With Darcy, Edmund, Knightley and Captain Wentworth she finds it. After Northanger Abbey and Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen was no longer content to use the courtship and marriage convention as an arbitrary, static device to unify her social satire. Freeing her plots from the rigidity of the prototype as it came to her, she developed variations that are thematical- ly significant and structurally dynamic as they look to the founding of new and positive groupings. Thus the storybook romance of Jane Bennet and Bingley makes the intelligent courtship of Elizabeth and Darcy look plausibly true to life. Both are also an indictment of the social mores of the times for marriage. The likelihood that Fanny Price would marry Henry Crawford if




Edmund married Mary sets hard reality against the convention, and for many modern readers has apparently made the convention look more true than everyday life. Emma constructs her own versions of the courtship and marriage plot, and from their unreality she learns to restrain her fancies and to applaud more likely marriages. Yet her fancies have opened her mind to a vision of respect for her sex. They have taught her what her community cannot-how to imagine a better life for women in her patriarchal society. In Persuasion Anne Elliot matures over the years by rejecting socially desirable matches in favor of one based firmly on reciprocal and durable love. It is a vibrant triumph of sensibility, a surprising reversal for the author who de- nounced sensibility in Marianne Dashwood. In these last four novels Jane Austen reworked the courtship and marriage plot into a malleable framework for her art. Instead of accepting it as a fixed structure, she enlarged it and modified it to suit her specific purpose in each novel. By doing so she made the convention a vital feature of her own art and developed it into a criticism of the life allotted by her society to young women of the times.

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NOTES

1. Northanger Abbey, p. 199. All references to Jane Austen's novels are to the edi- tion of R. W. Chapman, The Novels of Jane Austen, 3rd ed., London, 1932-34, 5 vols.

2. Jane Austen's special familiarity with Sir Charles Grandison is noted by James Edward Austen-Leigh in his Memoir of Jane Austen: "Every circumstance nar- rated in Sir Charles Grandison, all that was ever said or done in the cedar parlour, was familiar to her" (ed. R. W. Chapman, Oxford, 1926, p. 89).

3. Elizabeth "refuses the hand which he ungraciously offers, and does not perceive that she has done a foolish thing until she accidentally visits a very handsome seat and grounds belonging to her admirer" ([Sir Walter Scott] Emma; a Novel, Quarterly Review, XIV, 27 [Oct. 1815], p. 194).

4. R. Brimley Johnson, Jane Austen: Her Life, Her Work, Her Family, and Her Critics, London, 1930, p. 150; David Cecil, "Jane Austen" in Poets and Storytellers, London, 1949, p. 107.

5. R. W. Chapman, Jane Austen: Facts and Problems, Oxford, 1948, pp. 195-196; Andrew Wright, Jane Austen's Novels, London, 1953, p. 130.

6. Elizabeth looks to grow in her marriage with Darcy: "It was an union that must have been to the advantage of both; by her ease and liveliness, his mind might have been softened, his manners improved, and from his judgment, information, and knowledge of the world, she must have received benefit of greater impor- tance" (p. 312).




7. Resilience in times of crisis had been developed as a feminine strength by several of Jane Austen's predecessors. Fanny Burney shows Evelina's presence of mind in stopping her brother from killing himself. Charlotte Smith has Emmeline save Adelina by nursing her through the birth of her illegitimate child. Clara Reeve in The School for Widows describes how her heroines support their families in distress, and so does Ann Radcliffe in The Italian.



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